User blog comment:Llamao/A Disappearing Act/@comment-3135907-20111026181738

In sight of the Island in the Great Inland Sea, a massive log raft sits, bobbing slightly in the swell. Aboard, filling it almost to the sinking, are about threescore shivering, waterlogged vermin. A pitiful fire has been built in the very center, half covered by a ragged canvas tent. These are the treacherous bodyguard of Varian Marlfox. Slowly, ever so slowly they had managed their way through the forest after their rebellion, and even slower yet they had constructed this haphazard barge. Many had died on the way, some killed by Varian when she was attacked, some by falling trees while building the raft, and others still by bogs and sifting sands, and the one true menace: starvation. The foxes and rats took over instantly, a fox named Gillid. Lig and Sliguld, rat and fox companions of the new leader, kept the work in line, and now the three plus another, Wodil the stoat, rested in a warm tent, while the fifty-six others aboard battled the waves and the ramshackle tiller set at the stern to keep the boat from being hurled against the rocks. They had already looted Castle Marl, and were now preparing to cross the lake and back to Mossflower, away from the dreaded place of Magicfoxes.